Seminar Series on Food Options, Opinions and Decisions (FOOD): Integrating perspectives on consumer perceptions of food safety, nutrition and waste

Our seminar series aims to understand and improve UK consumers' decisions about nutrition, food safety, and food waste. Our goals align with DEFRA, the Food and Agricultural Organisation and others who use the modern view of 'food security' for developed countries, by defining it as access to food that is nutritious, affordable, safe, and sustainable, while producing minimum waste. Better food safety and reduced food waste are also high priority for the EU. Improvement is needed because (1) foodborne illnesses amount to 17 mln cases per year in the UK, including 20,000 hospitalizations and 500 deaths; (2) warnings about food risks can cause undue alarm and increase food waste; (3) UK domestic food waste is 7 mln tonnes per year, of which 4.2 mln tonnes is deemed preventable; (4) Fresh food is more nutritious but also more perishable, potentially affecting food safety and food waste; (5) UK consumers are increasingly making unhealthy food choices, contributing to 62% of UK adults being overweight or obese, and leading to health problems that cost the NHS more than £5 billion per year.
Our seminar series is timely and novel because it follows calls to better understand and inform the complex decisions consumers face about nutrition, food safety, and food waste. We aim to identify strategies that help consumers to achieve nutritious food choices that both improve food safety and reduce food waste. Our seminar series has been designed by our team of practitioners and academics, with the goal of achieving the best impact. Our practitioner team members come from the Food Standards Agency which aims to improve food safety and healthy eating, as well as at the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) which aims to reduce food waste. Our academic team members come from the University of Leeds Centre for Decision Research and the Human Appetite Research Unit who are experts in consumer food choice, domestic food waste, and risk communication, as well as from the NewCastle University Food and Society Group at the School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development who are experts in food safety and risk communication. Through 9 seminars to be held over 3 years, we will create a lasting network of users and academics who have mostly been working separately on these different topics to date. We have confirmed academic and practitioner speakers from across the UK and overseas who are key experts in the relevant domains. Seminars will be hosted at and promoted by participating universities and practitioner agencies, thus drawing diverse audiences. We will fund the travel of junior researchers and PhD students, for whom participation provides a unique opportunity for creating new networks and research ideas.
Our project will identify strategies for helping consumers to improve food safety and reduce food waste. The PI and her team of users and academics will build on their international connections to share our findings at meetings with academics, users, consumers, and other interested parties worldwide. Our findings will be summarized in joint review papers that represent practitioner and academic experiences with developing effective strategies for helping consumers with food-related decisions. Our project website will provide public access to recordings and presentation slides from our seminar series, with information for academics, users and consumers about how to improve food safety and reduce food waste. Academics and users will work together to write joint grant proposals, with the goal of designing, implementing and testing the most promising strategies, thus identifying the best ways for helping consumers to make healthier, safer, and less wasteful food choices.

Our seminar series aims to understand and improve consumer decisions about nutrition, while increasing food safety and reducing domestic food waste. Our beneficiaries include consumers, practitioners, and policy makers. (See also the Pathways to Impact document)
1. Beneficiaries include consumers in the UK and other developed countries. Our seminar series will identify novel strategies for helping consumers to make more informed decisions about nutrition, food safety and food waste. This effort will build on the PI's expertise in developing effective risk communication for diverse audiences (Bruine de Bruin & Bostrom, 2013). Consumers will also be given access to seminar recordings and presentation slides through our project website. The project website will also provide consumers with information about nutrition, food safety and food waste. We will also create press releases on these topics, targeting consumers. We will bring together practitioners and academic who will jointly seek external funding to take this work forward. Planned follow-up work will involve implementing and testing the most promising strategies - with the ultimate goal of improving consumers' food-related decisions and outcomes.
2. Beneficiaries include practitioners who aim to inform consumers' decisions about nutrition, food safety or food waste. These practitioners will initially benefit by participating in our seminar series. Confirmed participants and speakers include practitioners from our project partners the Food Standards Agency, and Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) as well as agencies such as DEFRA and industry such as Marks and Spencers. Additionally, our project partners Food Standards Agency and WRAP will be hosting some of the seminars, thus making it easier for their practitioner colleagues to attend. Project partners have also agreed to promote our seminar series, helping us to invite practitioners from other user organisations. As noted, our project website will provide access to seminar recordings and presentation slides, to allow even users who can't attend to benefit from our seminar series. Our seminar series will allow practitioners to grow lasting networks with each other and with key academic experts in relevant domains, thus providing a unique opportunity for practitioners and academics to identify promising strategies for helping consumers, and to jointly seek external funding so as to systematically implement and test those strategies. To discuss ongoing work, we plan to continue holding seminars beyond the planned project period.
3. Beneficiaries include policy makers who aim to help consumers with decisions about food safety, food waste, and nutrition. The goal of our seminar series is to identify effective strategies for promoting better consumer decisions about these topics, as well as to take the work forward by forming lasting networks of practitioners and academics, and by seeking joint funding for implementing and testing promising strategies. Although our seminar series will be conducted in the UK, we will share our findings in outreach workshops to international policy makers as organised by the Swiss-based International Risk Governance Council, where the PI is on the scientific committee. She will also address policy makers at risk communication workshops organised by the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, and an expert panel at HealthCanada. Our team members also regularly address policy makers, with for example CoI Frewer being scheduled to speak at the Institute for Global Food Security. Our project partner the Food Standards Agency is co-hosting the Paris Risk Group Workshop, which informs the work of international Risk Assessment Agencies and will involve speakers from our project team.
NOTE: The Pathways to Impact document provides more information about our plans for user involvement, our website, press releases, continued seminars and outreach.